we never worried about the autistic link and went for the MMR at the height of the hysteria - DS1 is almost 12.we vaccinated all the others too, DD is just due forher first dose at 13 months.

I'm glad I didn't fall for scaremongering, but boy was I unpopular back then! I'm guessing I'm going to be unpopular again as I'm sounding bloody smug, but I'm happy that making that decision turned out to be "right thing" - well at least for now, that is. I'm actually waiting for the tide turn again in the next decade...

I do of course feel for the children affected by this epidemic and sympathize with the parents who thought they did the best thing for them at the time - they are not to blame for shying away from the single dose MMR, it is hard to know what to do when top experts disagree!

The thing that has always confused me is: even if Wakefield had been right (which he most certainly isn't), surely the potential risk of being affected by autism through MMR is lower than the potential risk of complications through measles/mumps/rubella over a person's lifetime? 1% of children are diagosed with autism apparently, and Wakefield himself only suggested MMR might be linked to autism "in a small number of people" so presumably its much lower than a 1% risk in having MMR? (pardon my poor statistics application). Whereas 1 in 15 people will risk serious complications from measles such as deafness, meningitis or brain damage; and 1 in 5000 will die. It seems an odd approach to managing risk if you're that worried about your child's wellbeing. A bit like deciding to only ever walk in the road because of the risks of cars mounting the pavement in an accident.

Or of course, your child's 'safety' depends on everybody else be willing to take a risk you aren't, in order to protect your family from potential measles infection through community immunity.

The reason I didn't go for MMR has nothing to do with Wakefield and/or autism. Vaccine-induced encephalitis was of much more concern to me. I weighed the actual risk of disease against the risk of vaccination. If the risk of disease was higher, we vaccinated. If it wasn't, we didn't. DD has had single measles jabs as the risk of that disease is higher than the risk of the vaccine.

Our dc are now all 9,11,13 immunised at 18 months (was policy in our area then) apart from dd2 as we were travelling to Central America when she was 16 months so she was vaxed at 15 months. Alongside typhoid, menc, rabies and bcg..

I reckon they pick up more bugs up off the floor in a day than I could vax them with in a month.

But I have been called UR for this in the past. Dh is a GP and in the end I gave him the decision (he'd read the papers involved). All our dc are monsters fine!

omaoma it varies - just look up the manufacturer's information sheet for a particular jab and look up the risk of encephalitis on there. It won't be called "vaccine induced encephalitis" on their information sheet.

In all the vaccines I've given it's been < 1 10 000. I'm not anti-vacc, just not keen on the current way that we do vaccines in this country. The "one size fits all" doesn't fit all, causes fear and mistrust. It is virtually impossible to have a sensible conversation about vaccines, and though there is fault on both sides, the Government/Whitehall aren't acting in a way that is conducive to changing the way many parents feel.

Meant to add - I also don't like the way that parents who question the vaccination are always thought to be of that mind because of Wakefield and autism. There are other reasons parents choose to think carefully about how/when/if they vaccinate their child.

and another reason to get vaxed IMO is to protect others from catching it!

Last year when I was 7months pg with DD I worked briefly with some children at DS4's school and one of the children was confirmed being ill with measles, another suspected. the time line we worked out meant that I was borderline in danger of having caught it - my mum was adamant I was vaxed as a kid, but blood test showed otherwise!

perhaps it didn't take and she later remembered I may have missed out because I was very ill at the time I should have had it. we checked it online and when I was 2yrs the policy changed, so it never got done, as it wasn't compulsory anymore! (this was mid-seventies in Hungary). so yes, bad luck and less info at the time (my mum felt terrible guitly as well as worried).if I had know, I would have gotten vaccinated before getting pg with eldest, but there are no routine tests for this!

measles in pg women can cause a late miscarriage or still birth, so I was terrified of loosing my DD and was furious at the thought that if that kid wasn't vaxed by choice I could potentially lose her due to something that could have been so easily avoided!Thank God I didn't catch it, so all was fine, but those two weeks were just horrendous, I don't wish that on anyone!

yes exactly, Amazing. World i guess that is also how I feel - there may well be some risks to individuals in any vaccination but a big reason to vaccinate is because we all depend on the wider community to survive, and this is our investment back into the community. Surely a one size fits all approach is used because this is most effective way to deliver safety to the most people, given current resources. Can that really be labelled a malevolent thing? the levels of risk you're talking about are very small versus the risk of receive poor or even health-decreasing levels of care in old age, which must be something like 99% at the moment.

omaoma thanks, I agree with you as well on the risk v.benefit argument and we have to take calculated risks all the time (like getting in the car)

perhaps not the best analogy, but we all know that 1 in 3 pregnancies end in early MC.That is "only" a 66% success rate, yet we still get pg don't we?! we know we take a risk, some more than others and that it could end badly, yet we hope for the best, because the positive end result of having a healthy baby dwarfs any potential risks in comparison!

so if there's only a very small % of a vaccine causing harm (way smaller then the risk of loosing a baby!) and the likelyhood of a positive outcome is just under 99% (or so) , my instinct says to go for it and pray for the best.

I have a problem with vaccinating my chid to protect someone else. Nothing in life is 100%safe, vaccines included. If my child is damaged by the vaccine will the people who depend on herd immunity come along to help me provide 24 hour care to my child. I think not!

I'll take the chance with the disease, I couldn't cope with vaccine damage, especially when the vaccine was only being done to add to herd immunity, as in the case of mumps and rubella. If I could just have a measles vaccine on it own I might well do so but th vaccine contains two component parts that are only there to add to herd immunity so will give it a miss.

Ther is a vaccine damage scheme but it takes years of years of effort to get a paltry payout that goes no way to addressing the problems caused.

I don't think herd immunity will fall anyway since virtually all these diseases were on their way out anyway, without vaccines.

But in answer to the original question I haven't changed my mind and don't see how I can.

I don't think herd immunity will fall anyway since virtually all these diseases were on their way out anyway, without vaccines.

That is not correct - death from diseases was less likely due to improvements in medical care, for example the advent of antibiotics, but morbidity did not sink until vaccination. If you get measles today your risk of complications is just as high as that of a well cared for child in the 1960ies.

I don't agree with you, if you look at a chart of how these diseases declined since 1850 (yes 1850) you will see that most of the decline happened before there was any vaccination, of course improvements in medical care helped, but so did improvements in living conditions, sanitation, better nutrition and less overcrowding.

I have one child damaged by the mmr and 5 children not damaged by the measles the had last year. I am still very glad I decided not to vaccinate. As I said on another thread I am glad that they now have had a good dose of the measles and are properly immunised.

Frontdoorstep the graphs are for death rates not cases of measles. They are also on dodgy websites that miss out years on graphs etc which makes the figures look like measles in decline. In the uk in 1946 there were around a 160k cases of measles in 1961 there were are around 760k. Does that sound like a disease in decline hpa figures You cannot trust websites that link to Whale.

Bruffin, the only data that is missed out is on charts supplied by the nhs, they can only go back to when the vaccine was introduced and then they show a small decline up to the present day. They don't show you charts going back to 1800s because it would be evident that vaccination had little do with disease decline. Also I don't think quoting figures from two years, plucked out of thin air, does much to show decline or increase or otherwise. I'm not just talking about measles, it applies to all diseases, what happened to scarlet fever?